


life on earth

by disheveledcurls



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, bellamy & clarke & madi, bellamy & clarke & the spacekru, minor background becho, minor background memori, minor bellamy & clarke & octavia, minor bellamy & octavia, no echo hate please, s5 aus and s6 spec, season five fix-it fic, slightly AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-05-21 13:17:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14916081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disheveledcurls/pseuds/disheveledcurls
Summary: "Nevermind, I see you." The head and the heart, and everything in between.(or, a short bellarke-centric ficlet collection inspired by the events of season five so far)





	1. this then is love

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: In which I fill in the blanks and details of what Clarke and Bellamy and co. must have been thinking and feeling during the reunion and after. Most snippets and ficlets will be canon compliant, but I’ll probably tweak a few plot points to add a missing conversation or two as chapters go by. Title from the Snow Patrol song of the same name. Unbeta’d, so any mistakes or inaccuracies are my own. And I'm quite rusty so there's probably plenty to be improved -- apologies!

_This then is love — deep joy that you should be._

_(...) I see you and my heart has found_

_A reason for mankind and an apology._

 

from Lucy Boston's "Farewell to a Trappist"

 

 

**one**

 

—another nightmare, she tries to reason through the pain, another horrible dream, horrible in its simple beauty, taunting her cruelly with a future that never was, a future free of pain and hardship, where she gets to see her friends and her mother again, where she gets to raise Madi safely, where every day is good and full of possibility instead of a brutal, never-ending fight for the next breath. This isn’t real, she schools herself, through gritted teeth, it isn’t real and it never will be, because everyone she loves is dead, except for Madi, if they don’t have her already. No one is coming to save her.

But then whose voice is it she hears, cutting through the dark haze, negotiating with her captors? It must be the torture, she rationalizes it breathlessly. Her body’s in shock and her fried, battered brain is concocting some merciful hallucination to make it all a little more bearable. To give her brain some credit, though, what a beauty this vision is to behold. A king, tall and certain and strong and more importantly, Bellamy, coming to her rescue at exactly the right time, sending Madi away to safety, haloed by the blazing lights of the Rover like some scruffy-looking angel, and looking into her eyes, one last time, to tell her she matters. It’s more than Clarke could ever hope for. It’s everything. She holds her breath, and the angel’s gaze, for as long as she can, until she has to stop, overwhelmed by the sheer pain of its impossibility. She slumps, finally, buries her face in the dirt, and lets go, convinced that the next breath she takes will be the last. She will carry that vision with her to wherever she’s going next.

 

***

**two**

 

— _let there be light_ , that’s what comes to his mind in that exact moment, his body somehow calm, moving slowly and steadily, as if deep under water, and it makes no sense since he’s never been the religious type, but if any miracle on heaven or earth could make a believer of him it would be this. And so there it goes, _let there be light_ , echoing faintly inside his skull, because one moment there was chaos and darkness and nothing to anchor him, and the next, a little girl who spoke his name with a familiarity he could not explain, and later still, a body on the ground, illuminated and surrounded by killers, a body he almost wished he didn’t recognize and a flash of blond hair shimmering in the headlights like pale gold. One moment there’s fear and grief and confusion only, and a mere second later, the floodgates open and there’s also so much love, enough indeed to make a world with. Which means there is a choice: turn back, drive away, and let chaos eat up the world again, or step out into the night and do what he must to save it.

Bellamy makes the same choice as always. He tells Madi the plan and gets out of the car, so that everything can begin again.

 

 


	2. an intervention

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: Set during the 5x04 Bellarke reunion and its immediate aftermath (which I’m reimagining, so this chapter is only partly canon-compliant.) The Pushkin quote Bellamy mentions is my own extended paraphrase of Catherynne M. Valente’s paraphrase in her 2011 novel _Deathless._ I’m choosing to believe the Ark has digitally preserved a vast array of world literatures and that Bellamy may well have read Pushkin (or indeed _Deathless_ ) at some point during those six years with nothing to do. Why? Because Bellamy —or at least this Bellamy— is a huge nerd, that’s why. (Can you believe it’s canon that one of his ancestors was an astronaut with four PhDs? Bless.) Once again, this unbeta’d, so any mistakes or inaccuracies are my own.

 

 

 

 

> The problem with a quantum universe, neither random nor determined, is that we who are the intervention don’t know what we are doing. Love is an intervention. (…) Not romance, not sentimentality, but a force of a different nature from the forces of death that dictate what will be.

Jeanette Winterson, _The Stone Gods._

 

**one**

 

First, the soldiers, whoever they are, whisk away their unconscious prisoner into some faraway, unknown corner of the ship, and then Bellamy is taken to a church-like building in the village to talk to their leader, a tall, angular woman he mistrusts immediately. Everything about her and her crew is sharp, hostile, weary, and utilitarian. But while even the most volatile of her colleagues look bone-tired, sickly and dead behind the eyes, the colonel exudes authority and ambition, her cunning little eyes assessing him constantly with the air of one who doesn’t miss a damn thing. Which means she will be trouble, sooner or later. But Bellamy can’t think about the future, not when the present moment is so mind-boggling and surreal as to ask him to believe that death can be undone, and the impossible, be possible. That Clarke is alive, somehow, after six years, that she survived a world on fire and the slimmest of odds and came out victorious only to fall into the hands of these invaders, simply because Bellamy and the rest of the people she saved failed to come back in time.

And so all the while, as he attempts to negotiate their terms in the calm, self-assured way he imagines is required of him, there is a part of his mind that’s locked in a room having a panic attack, repeating over and over the single impossible, anarchical fact that Clarke is alive, that these grubby usurpers have no idea who they’re holding prisoner or the lengths her people would go to in order to get her back, even after Bellamy’s threats and the colonel’s quick little deduction — and if he wasn’t so tense he would be laughing and laughing and  weeping, too, because they just have no clue, do they, they called her _important_ like that’s all she is, like they’re talking about territory or financial assets, something mundane and replaceable. Bellamy has no words he thinks are good enough to verbalize how much Clarke matters, what she means to the people she saved, to the world she used to inhabit, and he intends to keep it to himself anyway, but it must show, because the moment they reach an agreement and he asks after Clarke, he sees in Diyoza’s faint, knowing smirk that he has unwittingly confirmed some private notion she was toying with, that he has stood in front of a killer and exposed his Achilles’ heel for all the world to see. So be it, he tells himself bravely, or at least trying to be brave about it. Everybody has a weakness and he will find theirs too, in time. If nothing else, six years stranded in a tin can in space have taught him patience.

***

When they finally take him to her holding cell, Bellamy stands in the doorway for what feels like a long time, rooted to the spot, half-recalling Pushkin — _I used to be the Tsar of Life! Look how I waste away! In the dark, I have pored over the loss of you like pale gold!—_ and half-convinced that if he steps into the room the spell will break and she will disappear, like the terrible, wonderful mirage she must be. But when she wakes, he starts and goes to her swiftly, gathers her into his arms and stops thinking.

For a commander of death she looks undone, shaking and shell-shocked and wounded all over, like a prisoner of war in old documentary footage, or a refugee, but then again they all have been, from time to time. Victim and victimizer. Prisoner and torturer. He’s seen her hurt before, more times than he’d like, and far worse than this, and still, the smell of her singed skin and the sight of her bruised face, the angry welts on her neck and the black blood staining her shirt make him want to find whoever’s responsible and— But he doesn’t do that anymore. He put monster Bellamy in a box when he went back to space and he spent the next six years trying to shape himself into a leader worthy of Clarke’s faith, the same faith he saw in Madi’s eyes earlier today. _She knew you would come._ And so he will not be jeopardizing the deal he just made for petty retribution. The avenging angel stays in the box, and Bellamy buries his face in the crook of Clarke’s neck and finally, finally comes back to life.

 

**two**

 

They are being taken to Polis to open the bunker and Clarke is standing at a window, shaking, watching the earth fly past below as the ship eats up the distance, and for the first time in six years someone she sought, every night, among the stars, is in the room with her, and the shock of it is so great she can barely stay on her feet. Even thoughts of Madi’s safety pale in comparison. He is here. He is real. And all of her friends are alive and out there, somewhere, and they are going to open the bunker and let everyone out and — 

Clarke wavers suddenly and folds her arms against her body as another shiver goes through her. _Don’t be an idiot_ , she silently scolds herself, fully aware that they are surrounded by extremely dangerous people and that they have no idea what they’re gonna find inside the bunker. They are, as usual, on the brink of war. Hope alone isn’t going to get them anywhere. She needs to be smart and show strength. She needs to pay attention. And goddamn it, she needs to breathe. She leans on the window for support, closes her eyes and wills her lungs to draw breath. A few feet behind her, Bellamy and Shaw are discussing logistics, and as she zeroes in on Bellamy’s voice, her mind slowly begins to focus.

A few minutes later, the young man leaves them alone, the door closing behind him with a soft metallic thud, and Clarke feels marginally better. When she opens her eyes and turns, Bellamy is looking at her in a way that’s both achingly familiar and completely new at once. And if she hadn’t spent the last six years thinking she’d never see him again, she would not allow this overwhelming, unwavering attention. But, instead, she stares, too, trains her gaze on this gruff, disheveled angel flung out of space and looks and looks, as if she’s never going to have enough. Clarke’s heart feels fuller than it ever has, and the room seems too small for the cosmic expanse of all the things they aren’t saying.

Then Bellamy ducks his head shyly and goes off to rummage in his pack for something she can’t see. After a moment, he stands up again, having produced her jacket, which he must have picked up when they were leaving her holding cell. He approaches tentatively, like she’s some sort of wild animal he’s afraid to spook, and Clarke nearly rolls her eyes, because if he’s going to tiptoe around her for the rest of their lives, she’s going to lose her mind. “You seem cold,” he says by way of explanation, and in an instant he’s at her side, helping her shrug into her jacket. His fingers close around her shoulders for a moment and her body totters precariously. It would be so easy to burrow into his embrace and never move again. She resists.

“You okay?”

Clarke can’t seem to find her voice. He was a recurrent dream, a ghost at her side, a myth she spun for Madi around the campfire — so far and now so close. It’s unbearable. She nods as convincingly as she can, putting on a brave face. “I’m fine,” she mutters. “Thanks.”

Bellamy’s face darkens as he contemplates the state she’s in. He reaches out with shaky fingers to trace the burns and bruises on her neck and jaw. She doesn’t care that he has never touched her like this before. She wishes he had. “No, you’re not,” he whispers, his features pinched, as if he were the one in pain. “I’m so sorry I let them hurt you.”

He moves aside and she can’t understand why she immediately feels bereft. “Bellamy, don’t you dare blame yourself for any of this,” she demands, her feet stepping forth of their own accord, like her body has to chase after his. “You came back.” Saying it is enough to make her well up again, but she makes herself go on: “You _saved_ me, like always.”

“Not always,” he mumbles angrily, his face hardening in self-reproach. He turns away and walks over to the window, arms folded over his chest.

Clarke can’t stand it. “Don’t do that,” she pleads softly. “You did the right thing, and I’m proud of you.”

But all Bellamy does is shake his head, a mute rejection of her premise. Clarke sighs. Sweetness has never come easy to her, not even for Madi’s sake. She’ll have to try something different, and so she walks over to him. “Look at me,” she urges, giving it every ounce of commanding authority she has left. He obliges, but it’s fleeting, and so she grabs one of his big hands in both of hers, which finally gets his attention. “If you need forgiveness…” she intones slowly, holding his gaze. When he starts to protest, she bends to press a kiss to the inside of his wrist, over the crisscrossing veins, which stills him completely. She smiles briefly against his pulse point and then looks up. “You’re forgiven.” She means it, and hopes like hell he knows that.

Bellamy contemplates their joined hands for a long time. Finally, he takes a deep breath and quirks his mouth into something like a smile. “Thanks, princess,” he says, lifting his gaze to her face. “So you still believe in second chances.”

Clarke shrugs in relief and smiles. “Some things never change.”

“Good to know.” He nods. “I like the new hair, though.”

She shakes her head bashfully and almost laughs. This is ridiculous. It’s like six years never passed, like they’re still world-weary youths at the brink of a nuclear apocalypse, flirting desperately, belatedly, over oxymora. “Thanks,” she manages, after a moment. “I like your beard. It’s very… mature?”

To her surprise, Bellamy actually laughs, a brief–yet-full, genuine, mesmerizing laugh. “So I keep hearing. I guess I can’t ever shave again.”

“That’s rough, buddy,” Clarke says, mock-sympathetic. They’re still laughing when the door opens and Shaw pops in again, looking concerned.

“We’re about to land,” he announces. “You two ready?”

Bellamy looks to her for approval and Clarke finds herself wishing they had more time —at least enough to finish this one conversation, to give him the highlights of her thousands of radio calls—, but of course they don’t, of course there’s urgent work to be done, still, always, and more wars to fight. She schools her face into a semblance of determination and nods.

Shaw eyes them both carefully. “Follow me, then,” he says, turning on his heel and leaving the room.

Clarke takes a ragged breath as Bellamy holds the door open, and they walk out together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m not sure how much distance there’s supposed to be between Polis and the valley, so I may be wrong to have written that the Eligius crew flew Bellamy and Clarke over in their ship. Apologies if that’s the case. Also, I'm still looking for a beta if anyone's interested. :)


	3. icarus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set during 5x13 “Damocles: Part II.” AU. Canon compliant up to the last few minutes of the episode. I’ll probably be reimagining different aspects of the finale and speculating about the s5/s6 interlude, so you can expect more pieces in this timeframe. Echo POV. Unbeta’d, so any mistakes or inaccuracies are my own.

_Either love is_

_\- A shrine?_

_Or else a scar._

_(...) love is a bow-string pulled_

_back to the point of breaking._

_Love is a bond._

_(...) Yes, love is a matter of gifts_

_thrown in the fire, for nothing._

 

from “Poem of the End,” by Marina Tsvetaeva, trans. Elaine Feinstein

 

 They weren’t kissing when Echo walked past the locker room, but what she saw there still chilled the blood in her veins and made her stop in her tracks — arms and hands and fingers entwined, foreheads touching, elated whispers, and two people joined in an embrace so indivisible it begged the question of whether their bodies would actually function separately, once they let go. How was that possible? As far as Echo understood the timeline of the _skaikru_ story she’d reconstructed, piece by piece, over the years, Bellamy and Clarke had only known each other for about a year, with plenty of separations and absences in between, as opposed to the six uninterrupted years Bellamy had known the others, Echo included. By all logic, Clarke should have come to matter very little by now; Clarke should be a footnote, the odd one out, the stranger. But apparently, it was the other way around: apparently, in Bellamy’s private cosmology, Clarke Griffin, alive or dead, would always come first, and there was simply nothing and no one in heaven or earth that could change that single, unmovable point around which he built everything else.

 Echo’s heart started to rend itself apart in her chest, and her mind sank into civil war between the part of her that was a spy and the part of her that was a warrior. How could she have been so stupid? demanded the spy. She knew as well as any of the others what Bellamy had endured, how the blonde ghost he called _princess_ had haunted him, asleep or awake, every day for the last six years. They’d all known about his guilt, about his tears, about his endless nightmares. They’d all seen him waste away, those first few months — how he couldn’t eat or sleep or do anything other than stand by a viewport and stubbornly contemplate their burning world, below— until it got so bad a desperate Monty threatened to force-feed him his disgusting algae concoctions and lock him up in his room until he got the sleep he needed.

 It took Raven, of all people, to talk some sense into Bellamy, and it took all of them to bring him back, little by little, to the land of the living. Two years in, he started laughing again. Three years in, he forgave Echo for everything she had done to _skaikru_ back on the Ground. Four years in, he started to act like himself again, and everybody breathed a collective sigh of relief. As the six-year mark approached, he seemed to have fully moved on, and Echo was surprised to realize that she was a little bit in love with the quiet, resilient man he had become. That she craved to be loved like Harper and Emori were; that she’d be proud to have Bellamy at her side, even if all he could give her was that repetitive life on the Ring —killing time and eating algae and watching, forever, the world they had destroyed—, even if his adoptive _skaikru_ family —which she’d reluctantly, gradually, accepted as her own— was a poor substitute for the extended clan she had lost. 

  _See, she wasn’t stupid_ , argued the warrior in her, _she was brave_. _If you want something, you fight for it, even if the odds are stacked against you_. _That’s what the Ice Nation taught her to do._ And Echo had never found it hard to be brave. She had been raised for war. So, for the last eight months, ever since she and Bellamy had got together —Echo wasn’t sure what to call their relationship, and the surprised looks they got from the others told her she wasn’t the only one—, she had allowed herself to believe that he was no longer the human wreck who’d brought them to the Ring; that he was finally happy; that he had finally made peace with everything and everyone they’d been forced to leave behind.

 Evidently, she had been wrong.

 She stepped into the room carefully, cat-like and noiseless despite her growing anger. It took them a moment to even register her presence, but when they did, they sprang apart too quickly, as if to compensate, both red-faced and anxious.

 “I knew you’d forgive her for Polis. I figured you’d forgive her anything,” Echo started, slowly, her vision swimming a little with tears she could not believe she had in her system, “but I never imagined—” She trailed off, cleared her throat and gestured vaguely in front of her. Words weren’t supposed to fail her, either. How soft and weak she had become, after so long amongst _skaikru_. How unworthy of her clan. “You couldn’t even break up with me first?”

 “It’s not what you think,” Clarke cut in quickly, ever the diplomat with her damage control. “We were just talking.”

 “I should’ve known,” Echo went on, ignoring her, meeting Bellamy’s guilty gaze instead, forcing him to confront, once and for all, what he’d spent the last six years running from. “I should’ve known it would come to this. What am I to the mighty _wanheda_ , who came back from the dead for you?”

 “Echo, please.” He stepped forward, hands raised in a placating gesture, but Echo receded, maintaining the distance. He didn’t seem to know what else to say.

 That, too, should’ve been predictable, and yet it made her so angry —Bellamy, the protector, the man _spacekru_ looked to as a father, was hurting her; and Bellamy, the storyteller, always ready to offer a kind or inspirational word, couldn’t even muster a passable excuse for what he had done— that she found herself lashing back. “You said nothing would change.” She hated herself for bringing it up, and she despised the plaintive note in her own voice even more, but instinct had kicked in full blast, and she was a warrior, first and foremost. If she got hurt, she found a way to hurt back. “ _Yu spichen bushhada_.”

 “That’s enough,” Clarke said evenly, with a brief glance at Echo’s balled fists. She advanced until she was standing between Echo and Bellamy. “Nothing happened. There’s no need to fight.”

 “I wasn’t lying, E. I can explain,” Bellamy offered wearily.

 No tears, no speech, no desperate plea. Echo could tell by the look on his face that, as guilty as he may feel for hurting her —for running into Clarke’s arms as soon as he was able to—, he did not regret it. No matter how many times the world ended, what impossible choices had to be made to save the _kru_ , or how many years came to pass, Bellamy would always run to Clarke’s side. They were two suns, forever orbiting each other, and Echo, who’d always prided herself on her intelligence, had been a fool to think that she could ever get close to one of them, close enough to touch, without getting burned to a crisp.

 “Don’t bother,” she spat out grimly, with one last disdainful look at the pair. “Enjoy your second chance. Neither of you deserve it.”

  _So that’s what eight months will get you_ , she told herself wryly, as she stormed out of the room. Bellamy did not follow, and it was that, more than anything else, that told her it was truly over. Echo prayed to her _azgeda_ gods, if they were still somewhere, listening, that for the next ten years of cryosleep, she wouldn’t have to dream of the man she had loved or the happy days they had shared, for a while, among the stars. _Give me a sleep like death_ , she pleaded, as she lay down in her pod and closed her eyes. _Let my fight be over._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End-Notes: My s5 finale mood: disappointed but not surprised. There’s so much fix-it fic and s6 spec fic I want to write, but for some reason I started with this, the (IMO long-overdue) disintegration of the Becho ship. And look, no Echo hate, alright? It’s not her fault the writers are dumb. (Love triangles and will-they/won’t-they plots are so boring and see-through, JFC — get over it, @ jason. As a Bellarke shipper, all I want is for these two hot-headed idiots to be an ass-kicking power couple forever. I don’t want this stupid soap-opera drama. I want a full season of Bellarke together, building a world, raising Madi, and learning to heal and be happy, surrounded by their people. No more, no less. Ugh.) While Emori is my fave out of all the newer characters, I think Echo is interesting and deserved a better fate than being used as a plot device to further underscore the great Bellarke arc they’ve been building from day one. Maybe she’ll get a better storyline next season. 
> 
> Echo’s trig one-liner: “You lying coward.”


	4. both sides now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set during 5x13 “Damocles: Part II.” AU. Once more, canon compliant up to the last few minutes of the episode. This is set immediately before Echo’s chapter, “Icarus.” Clarke POV. Unbeta’d, so any mistakes or inaccuracies are my own. Title from Joni Mitchell’s classic song of the same name.

_And our hands are together as always, and know well what they hold._

from “Teaching to Shoot,” by Valentine Ackland.

 

 

The Eligius III crew really thought of everything, Clarke muses, as she dumps her clothes unceremoniously in a smelly heap on the floor and changes into the standard-issue dark grey pajamas provided by the mining corporation for all its potential cryo-sleepers. The top she’s been given hangs a bit loose on her, the neckline skimming down to reveal one shoulder or the other unless she keeps dragging the extra fabric towards the center, but she’s not about to complain, not after wearing clothes fashioned from rags, or directly taken off of dead bodies, for the last few years.

 Most of _wonkru_  and what remains of Diyoza’s men and women are in the pods already, alongside Madi, Abby, and a comatose Kane. Monty and Harper are puttering around the ship somewhere, performing the last check-ups and making sure, they said, all protocols were in place for their upcoming ten-year nap — they can’t be too careful, they all agreed. If they wake up to find the water generator has broken down, the algae farm hasn’t grown enough plants, or some other technical malfunction has taken place, they’ll be fucked. Better safe than sorry. Clarke still finds it hard to wrap her head around what has just taken place —how they’ve destroyed the world once more, yet, this time, she and Madi have been able to join their friends on the one ship to salvation—, let alone what’s about to happen. Best to let Monty and Raven and Shaw handle everything; they know what they’re doing. When they all wake up, in ten years’ time, if she’s still needed then, Clarke will do her part. For now, there’s nothing else she can do, except go to sleep, like the others.

 The fact that muffled voices can be heard over the soft murmur of machinery tells Clarke a few other people in the ship must still be awake, trying to prepare, stalling the inevitable.  Just moments ago, when she passed the cryo chamber on her way to a private unit to get changed, Clarke glimpsed Bellamy and Echo standing close and talking in low voices by their respective pods — saying their goodbyes and making loving promises, Clarke imagines. She wishes she didn’t have to feel jealous about it, but apparently she’s even more selfish than she thought, because the jealousy is there, unfailingly, slithering its way down her throat like a mouthful of something disgusting. She tries not to dwell on it. After all, life has been very generous with her. Less than a month ago, she believed she would probably never see her friends or her mother again, and in the weeks that followed, she thought she may have to sacrifice one or more of her loved ones, or even her own life, for Madi’s sake. But she hasn’t had to. The world has been consumed by war yet again, and they’ve lost the valley, but for the first time in her long history of impossible choices and apocalyptic endings, Clarke hasn’t lost anyone else. They’ve saved over four hundred people, including Madi, Abby, and Clarke’s friends, and Bellamy has forgiven her for her betrayal in Polis. So she tells herself to suck it up and handle a little jealousy. What does it matter, in the grand scheme of things, as long as Bellamy stays alive and happy? Save Madi’s life, there is no price Clarke will not pay to keep him that way. She’d like to think that would make Wells proud, wherever he is.

 She isn’t sure what to do with her things until she remembers Diyoza mentioning a personnel locker room, and sets out to find it. In her relatively short life, Clarke has been beaten, tortured, wounded, kidnapped and threatened with a gun to her head or a blade at her throat more times than she’d care to remember, and yet somehow it’s padding around in her socks in an eerily empty ship that she suddenly feels naked and defenseless for the first time in years, even with the reassuring weight of her gun tucked in the waistband of her sweatpants. She has a feeling it’ll be hard to let go of her weapon, even though she knows, rationally, that she won’t need it in the foreseeable future. They’ll all have to adapt to their new lives, whatever shape or form they take in ten years’ time, she supposes. It probably won’t be easy.

 When she gets to the staff room, she finds Bellamy inside, sitting on one of the long benches in the middle with his head in his hands. Something tells her that to make her presence known would be an intrusion, and yet, before she can help herself, she’s already walked in and asked, “Bellamy? You okay?”

 His head whips up as he looks at her, his eyes red-rimmed, or so it seems to her. “Hi. Yeah.” He clears his throat. “I just put O to sleep. It was rough.”

 Clarke nods sympathetically. “I can imagine.” She picks a locker at random and shoves her stuff in, including her gun and her old, muddy boots. As she stands with her back to him, inputting her data into the electronic lock, it occurs to her that this is the most undressed they’ve ever been around each other, and she can’t help the warmth that stirs in her body at the thought. She shakes her head in silent mortification. At the end of the day, she is no __wanheda__ , some mythical, deathless creature made of blood and gunpowder. She is Clarke Griffin, a very tired, fairly traumatised twenty-something, for whom Bellamy Blake embodies a cluster of unclassifiable feelings she usually tries not to delve into. She’s got bigger things to think about anyway, like the survival of the human race, or how to start human civilization from scratch, again. Bellamy’s voice, thankfully, pulls her out of her embarrassing reverie.

 “Sorry, what was that?” She casts a questioning look over her shoulder. He’s standing halfway across the room, hands on his hips, curls falling into a slightly exasperated face, a scene so familiar that its absence for the past six years belatedly hits her like a ton of bricks. There may come a day when she will stop missing him, mourning all the time they’ve lost. Today is not that day.  

 “I said, how’d it go with Madi and Abby?”

 “Oh.” She enters a pin code into the e-lock, which seals up the compartment with an old-fashioned __clink__. She turns around, leans against the locker wall with her hands behind her back, and shrugs. “Fine, I guess. I honestly don’t know what we’re gonna do after cryo, you know? But I’m glad we all made it up here.”

 He nods gravely. “Yeah. Whatever happens next, at least we got it right this time. All of us up here, together.” He meets her gaze with shining eyes, and Clarke only nods gratefully, afraid of what she might say if she opens her mouth. As they fall silent, Bellamy shoves his hands in his pockets and walks to the small porthole on the other end of the room. Clarke follows his gaze as it strays to the landscape beyond: the endless velvet black, studded with blinking stars, and the ashen planet below. Instinctively, she walks over and fills the space at his side. “Can’t believe we did that again,” she remarks dryly. __“_ Ai don gon wamplei _—__ _ _”__

 “Destroyer of worlds,” Bellamy supplies, without missing a beat. “You’d think we learn something, eventually. Stop fucking things up. Guess not.”

 Clarke chews the inside of her cheek for a moment, thoughtful. “I don’t know what that says about humanity. Either we’re incredibly stupid or we’re all evil.”

 “Jeez, princess,” Bellamy protests, looking mildly scandalized. “How flattering.”

 “You got a better explanation?” They probably shouldn't be joking about the recurrent end of the world, but she thinks they are definitely past propriety at this point. “I’m all ears.”

 “Why bother? You've summed us up perfectly.”

 “But I could totally be wrong. It’s not like I witnessed any stupid or evil decisions first hand or anything.” The subject matter may be grim, but being able to tease Bellamy about it lifts part of the weight off her shoulders and curls the corners of her mouth in a faint, rueful smirk. “Plus, you’re the historian. You should make the call.”

 “Me, a historian?” Bellamy shakes his head once, brow furrowed, but a shy smile is spreading slowly across his unwilling face. “I think that would take a lot less fighting and a lot more reading.”

Clarke suddenly understands how much he wants that alternative reality, the freedom to be a teacher or a storyteller rather than a soldier, and it cuts her to the bone. She will build that future for him with her bare handsif it’s the last thing she does, she vows silently, right there and then. “So go ahead. Plenty of time to do that now,” she points out, going for nonchalance.

 He hums a note of amused assent. “Maybe. We’ll see what happens after we wake up. If we can actually do better this time around, and start over the right way…” He trails off and shrugs.

 Meaning, Clarke infers, that he is only cautiously optimistic, and that thoughts of his own happiness are, as usual, relegated to the very back of his mind, after a very long checklist of Important Issues to Do With Saving the Human Race. She sighs and runs a hand over her face. “Look, we have to. And I really hope Madi won’t have to be Commander ever again. She’s just a _kid _,__  for God’s sake.”

 A puzzling shadow flits across Bellamy’s face at that, presumably guilt about putting the flame in Madi’s head, but before she can reassure him that she’s forgiven him for  what happened in Polis, he fixes an unreadable look on her and says, “Madi told me about the calls.”

  “Calls?” Clarke repeats dumbly, feeling her palms grow sweaty.

 “Is it true?” His voice is so unsteady it makes the room feel small and airless. “Is it true you radioed me when I was on the Ring?”

 She struggles for a moment, at a loss for words. Even though she meant to bring it up herself at some point, she finds she has no idea where to start. _I missed you so much I nearly went insane. You’re the reason I didn’t lose my mind._ It’s too much, and yet to downplay what she felt for six years, what she feels even now, would be dishonest, disloyal, a betrayal. “Yeah,” she manages at last. “Yeah, I did.”

 “Every day for six years?” The utter disbelief in his eyes, and the way his voice falters, break her heart.

 “Every day for six years,” she confirms, averting her eyes as she blinks back tears. “Pathetic, huh?”

 “No, it’s not,” he counters at once, so firm and yet so gentle she finally starts crying in earnest. “I wish I’d known. I wish we could’ve heard you.”

 “Me too.”

 Bellamy’s features twist into a sorrowful, puzzled frown, like he just can’t make sense of the pain they’ve caused each other, even unintentionally. “C’me here, princess.” He bridges what little distance remains between them and wraps Clarke in an embrace that lifts her off the ground, and she holds on so tight she can barely breathe, and it still isn’t close enough. “Hey. I missed you too. So much.” When his voice catches on the last two words, it only makes her sob harder into the front of his shirt. “I get it. And I’m so happy I got you back.”   

  After a few moments, her cries subside and he sets her down gently, loosening his grip. Clarke tells herself to be content with this one perfect moment —to bury deep all the other one-sided conversations they still need to address, to make peace with the knowledge that the life she fantasized about sharing with him in some distant, peaceful future may never come to pass—, and starts to pull back. But Bellamy reaches out to wipe at her tear tracks and she isn’t sure what’s more breathtaking: the warm, lingering weight of his calloused fingers on her face, or the dreamy way he’s looking at her.

 “God,” he huffs out, around half a laugh, “I’d almost forgotten. You’re so _beautiful_.”

 Clarke’s mouth falls open as a blush creeps up her neck and cheeks. She is fully aware that, in all likelihood, neither of them deserve any of this, and she doesn’t give a shit. She takes it, greedily. “ _I_  didn’t forget—” She stops, her voice rougher than she’d anticipated, and starts over from a different angle. “I drew you,” she explains bashfully. “I drew everyone for Madi to see.”

 His eyes widen in surprise. “Huh. So that’s how she recognized us all. That first day.”

 “Yeah. Except she wasn’t expecting this.” Swallowing dry, she reaches out to trace his jaw, ignoring the way it makes her stomach flip. “A _ _space pirate beard__ , I think she called it.”

 His face falls incredulously, and then he’s laughing and it’s the most beautiful thing Clarke has seen in years. “ _Space pirate_?” he echoes, indignant. “She hates me, doesn’t she?”

 “She doesn’t hate you,” she counters, before she can really process what she’s saying.  “How could she? I raised her.”

 Bellamy frowns, slowly, like he’s considering that statement carefully, and then he asks, “What does that mean?”

 Clarke’s heart is beating painfully in her chest. “It means,” she explains, with a shuddering breath, “that when I told her stories about the guy who came to the Ground to save his sister and ended up saving us all so many times, she was paying attention.” She makes herself meet his gaze as she elaborates: “I told her you had a very hard life, but still you were the kindest, most generous person I knew. I told her you were kind of a dick at first, but then you learned from your mistakes and you tried to be better. And I told her to trust you, always.”

 That’s not the whole story, of course, and Madi, as the observant, clever little __natblida__  she’s always been, figured out as much soon enough. The first time Clarke showed Madi her drawings, trying to help her child put faces to the names she’d heard so much about, Clarke thought it may be helpful to point and say each person’s name, and their relationship to her, in Trigedasleng before she used the corresponding English word, hoping to make sure Madi understood. _Abby. Nomon. Mother. Jake. Nontu. Father. Wells. Lukot. Friend. Raven. Lukot. Friend. Bellamy…_ Clarke hesitated as she contemplated a particularly detailed portrait of Bellamy back in Mount Weather days. It seemed impossible to condense him into a single word — he contained multitudes. He was a brother and a rebel and a king, and so much more she didn’t even dare name. _Houmon?_ Madi filled in enthusiastically, her gaze keen and inquisitive. _Sadrona?_  Clarke felt color rising in her cheeks — apparently she was a lot more transparent than she’d like to believe. _No, no, em ste lukot seinteim _,__  she amended quickly, shaking her head. _He’s a friend too._  Madi’s reaction was skeptical even then, but she never questioned Clarke’s choice of words, much less her feelings. Clarke suspects that the new and improved, grown-up, Commander-Madi would be far less patient with her, but Madi isn’t here right now, and there are things Clarke still doesn’t feel ready to say.

 As Bellamy takes in her words, he looks shaken, but happy —which may be a first in their shared history— and Clarke has an overwhelming urge to kiss him. But since that, as she knows full well, would be wrong on several levels, she just throws her arms around him instead, rests her head on the crook of his neck, closes her eyes, and lets herself be lulled by his heartbeat. After a moment’s hesitation, he hugs her back. Bellamy stands strong and certain, holding her like something precious, and  their grey and barren world, hung aloft the sky just outside the window, seems to matter very little.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize if I’ve made any mistakes with the trig words/phrases I’ve used. Just in case you’re not familiar with the words Madi uses in that flashback, she essentially calls Bellamy “husband” and “partner”.

**Author's Note:**

> End-notes: I’m still looking for a beta for this fic so if any of y’all are interested, feel free to let me know in the comments or find me @ disheveledcurls on Tumblr. Thanks a lot for reading! :)


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